Snake Swallowing JAMB’s N36m Unrealistic – Registrar
Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB),
Professor Is-haq Oloyede, has said jewelry, pen,14 others will not be
allowed in exam rooms this year.
The board had remitted at least N3 million to the treasury annually prior to 2016, but when you took charge, about N7.8 billion was submitted in 2017. What kind of magic do you have?
It is just that we followed normal procedure. We tried to cut costs to ensure protection of the revenue so that there will be no leakages. We tried to internalise what we are doing rather than giving jobs out as contracts, and you will notice that there are no contractors here because there is no job to be contracted out.
So, for me, it is just doing things properly. If we returned N7.8bn is because Nigeria has put in place a process whereby when you do things rightly, the result will be better.
Where you able to look into why only small amounts of money were returned to the treasury in the past?
I am not an auditor and the president did not give me the mandate of probing what had happened before I came. He said “your appointment starts with immediate effect.” So, what happened before I came is definitely out of my mandate, and if in the process of running the organisation something comes as an obstacle; for instance the issue on the ban of scratch cards. I had the fortune and misfortune of being the one to stop the sale of scratch cards to candidates, and if I did not ask those who were selling it to account for the money they made, I wouldn’t have known what had happened and those who accounted for the money. I had nothing to do with them. You can’t blame my predecessor. And if in the process, they could not account for the money, and want to mystify what is ordinarily a mundane matter, then that person would have himself to blame. I am not an auditor and I am not interested in probing anybody and I do not think my mandate includes probing my predecessor.
One official who could not account for some money claimed that a strange snake swallowed N36 million realised from the cards: is that real?
I don’t think it’s real because people joke with very serious matters. Somebody said he dropped from heaven; he has no father and mother, you cannot be making jokes with those issues. No sane person will believe what is not real. As far as I am concerned, the issue of the snake is an alibi that somebody created and because there are so many snakes everywhere that is why people are joking with serious issues. This is something that has accumulated for almost five, six, seven years and if we haven’t stopped it, it would have continued because by the time you are selling for this year, you are using the money to settle that of last year and nobody will know.
There were incidences of cheating in exams last year; what were the most frequent cases?
Many of the malpractices are related to either the Internet or the Computer-Based Test (CBT) centre owners. There are also the ‘centres’ that conduct tutorials for candidates which claim that anybody that attends the tutorials will get 300 marks.
So, they were looking for any means legitimate and illegitimate; including blackmail, to get what they did not deserve.
Unfortunately, there are some decent people among them and they are not making noise. The Quran asks people to be conscious of creating commotion because the result of commotion may not be limited to those who caused the original commotion. They are causing trouble for innocent CBT owners and the earlier we speak out, the better, because if we do not, they will rubbish all of us.
Striking members of the non-teaching unions in universities were said to have disrupted the conduct of the mock UTME in some universities. Do they pose a problem to the main UTME?
I do not think so; I have done the needful and it’s unfortunate some people want to go that way in just two institutions. Assuming all the institutions owned by the Federal Government decide to go that way, we will still conduct our examinations. But what we have decided is that any CBT centre, for whatever reason; that is unable to conduct the mock cannot be used for our examination because we cannot bring them into our own network without test. And we are not prepared to test any system after the mock.
The board had remitted at least N3 million to the treasury annually prior to 2016, but when you took charge, about N7.8 billion was submitted in 2017. What kind of magic do you have?
It is just that we followed normal procedure. We tried to cut costs to ensure protection of the revenue so that there will be no leakages. We tried to internalise what we are doing rather than giving jobs out as contracts, and you will notice that there are no contractors here because there is no job to be contracted out.
So, for me, it is just doing things properly. If we returned N7.8bn is because Nigeria has put in place a process whereby when you do things rightly, the result will be better.
Where you able to look into why only small amounts of money were returned to the treasury in the past?
I am not an auditor and the president did not give me the mandate of probing what had happened before I came. He said “your appointment starts with immediate effect.” So, what happened before I came is definitely out of my mandate, and if in the process of running the organisation something comes as an obstacle; for instance the issue on the ban of scratch cards. I had the fortune and misfortune of being the one to stop the sale of scratch cards to candidates, and if I did not ask those who were selling it to account for the money they made, I wouldn’t have known what had happened and those who accounted for the money. I had nothing to do with them. You can’t blame my predecessor. And if in the process, they could not account for the money, and want to mystify what is ordinarily a mundane matter, then that person would have himself to blame. I am not an auditor and I am not interested in probing anybody and I do not think my mandate includes probing my predecessor.
One official who could not account for some money claimed that a strange snake swallowed N36 million realised from the cards: is that real?
I don’t think it’s real because people joke with very serious matters. Somebody said he dropped from heaven; he has no father and mother, you cannot be making jokes with those issues. No sane person will believe what is not real. As far as I am concerned, the issue of the snake is an alibi that somebody created and because there are so many snakes everywhere that is why people are joking with serious issues. This is something that has accumulated for almost five, six, seven years and if we haven’t stopped it, it would have continued because by the time you are selling for this year, you are using the money to settle that of last year and nobody will know.
There were incidences of cheating in exams last year; what were the most frequent cases?
Many of the malpractices are related to either the Internet or the Computer-Based Test (CBT) centre owners. There are also the ‘centres’ that conduct tutorials for candidates which claim that anybody that attends the tutorials will get 300 marks.
So, they were looking for any means legitimate and illegitimate; including blackmail, to get what they did not deserve.
Unfortunately, there are some decent people among them and they are not making noise. The Quran asks people to be conscious of creating commotion because the result of commotion may not be limited to those who caused the original commotion. They are causing trouble for innocent CBT owners and the earlier we speak out, the better, because if we do not, they will rubbish all of us.
Striking members of the non-teaching unions in universities were said to have disrupted the conduct of the mock UTME in some universities. Do they pose a problem to the main UTME?
I do not think so; I have done the needful and it’s unfortunate some people want to go that way in just two institutions. Assuming all the institutions owned by the Federal Government decide to go that way, we will still conduct our examinations. But what we have decided is that any CBT centre, for whatever reason; that is unable to conduct the mock cannot be used for our examination because we cannot bring them into our own network without test. And we are not prepared to test any system after the mock.
Snake Swallowing JAMB’s N36m Unrealistic – Registrar
Reviewed by Imsu Elijah
on
Monday, May 28, 2018
Rating:
Reviewed by Imsu Elijah
on
Monday, May 28, 2018
Rating:
, Professor Is-haq Oloyede, has said jewelry, pen,14 others will not be...)
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